Brent Scowcroft Center Resident Fellow Erik Brattberg co-writes for The National Interest on why President Obama should use his trip to Europe as an opportunity to reaffirm US support for European security:
Those European leaders who bestirred themselves to watch President Obama’s commencement address at West Point last week must have had mixed feelings. On the one hand, the speech amounted to a clear rejection of the Bush administration’s global war on terror, a policy that remains controversial in Europe and with inconclusive effects for the American presence around the world. At the same time, it failed to present a new vision of America’s global role in the 21st century to guide the Obama administration’s struggling foreign policy.
In particular, the speech was notably quiet on the need for America to support the Western liberal order and to strengthen the transatlantic partnership – two issues that are intimately connected, helped shape the last decades of world order, and which now both require strong U.S. leadership. The President must therefore use his trip to Europe this week to start designing a grand strategy that includes a vital role for Europe if he wants to keep the international liberal order alive and healthy in the years to come.